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Pakistan has carried out a series of military strikes on what it said were separatist militant hideouts inside Iran, its foreign ministry said Thursday, in the latest incident across their shared border that has sent tensions between the two neighbors soaring, reports CNN.
The new strikes mean both Pakistan and Iran have now taken the extraordinary step of attacking militants on each other’s soil this week at a time of expanding conflict in the Middle East and wider region.
Islamabad said its forces launched a “series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes” in Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan province as part of an operation called ‘Marg Bar Sarmachar’ — a phrase which loosely translates to “death to the guerrilla fighters.”
A “number” of militants were killed during the operation, Pakistan added.
Sistan and Baluchistan province’s deputy governor Alireza Marhamati said in an interview on state television that at least seven people had been killed following explosions and that the dead included three women and four children, who were foreign citizens.
Alireza Marhamati said another explosion took place near the city of Saravan, but there were no casualties from that second explosion.
Both Pakistan and Iran have long fought militants in the restive Baloch region along their 900-kilometer (560-mile) border but the latest incident marks a major escalation between the two neighboring powers and comes as regional hostilities in the Middle East mount over Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
Earlier Iran struck Pakistan and destroyed headquarters if militants there.
bd-pratidin/GR
